The report published last week following the public inquiry into the racist killing of Zahid Mubarek in Feltham prison in 2000 was always going to make unpleasant reading. But as well as being upsetting in its own right, it also completes a disturbing hat-trick for the Home Office.

According to the Mubarek inquiry, not only would a national intelligence sharing system have helped avoid a situation whereby inappropriate inmates share cells, the recommendation that such a system be developed dates back to 1995.

There are parallels here with the conclusions of the Bichard Inquiry in 2004. The investigation into the employment as a school caretaker of Soham murderer Ian Huntley, despite a string of earlier sexual allegations against him, concluded that a system for sharing police intelligence data was ‘a national priority’. It also noted that plans for such a scheme had been mooted as early as 1994, but had been abandoned in 2000.

The continuing fiasco over the national firearms register is a third variation on the same theme. After the Dunblane massacre, the Cullen inquiry recommended the development of a national database to ensure a person refused a firearms licence in one area could not successfully re-apply elsewhere. But that was in 1997. A decade later, the programme has still got no further than small-scale pilots.

It is not all bad. Plans for national police intelligence-sharing systems are now back on the stocks, though the original delivery date of 2007 has moved to 2010. And according to the latest estimates, the firearms register will finally be up and running by March next year.

But the point remains: national information sharing systems are not easy and not cheap, but nor are they that hard or expensive. Whatever the reasons for the string of delays – be they technical problems, financial issues or lack of political commitment – they must be addressed.

Public inquiries are not set up over trifles. And such prevarication would be unacceptable in one situation, let alone three.